The recordings represent 10 major Chinese dialects and more than 100 ethnic minority languages, including Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur and Zhuang, said Chen Xuliang, deputy Party secretary of the Hunan Museum.

　　"Digital technology is helping bring the results of language preservation research out of databases and into public cultural spaces," he said.

　　The exhibition draws on materials collected through a national language preservation project launched in 2015 to document and preserve the country's diverse languages and dialects. It is the world's largest project of its kind, according to experts.

　　Over the past decade, researchers have traveled to remote mountain villages and pastoral areas to find native speakers of different ages. They systematically recorded words, grammatical examples, oral traditions and other language materials, turning oral memories at risk of disappearing in digital records that can be preserved for generations.

　　The work has become increasingly urgent as the number of native speakers of some languages declines.

　　China is home to more than 100 languages and numerous dialects. Some languages, including Hezhen and Manchu, now have fewer than 100 speakers.

　　Economic integration, population mobility and the social changes they bring are making it increasingly difficult to preserve languages and cultural traditions around the world, said Wang Lining, a professor at Beijing Normal University's School of Chinese Language and Literature and a participant in the language preservation project.

　　Many languages lack well-developed writing systems, Wang said, meaning knowledge and memories passed down orally can be lost when their speakers die.